Abstract
Belligerents could in principle avoid the ex post costs of conflict by revealing all private information about their violent capabilities and then calculating odds of success ex ante. Incentives to misrepresent private information for strategic gain, however, can cause miscalculations that lead to war. I argue some private information can lead to miscalculation not because it is purposefully misrepresented for strategic gain but because it is too decentralized to be easily revealed. The decentralized private information that produces improvised weapons requires a process of discovering suitable local resources and battlefield testing driven by local military entrepreneurs which frustrates information revelation. Decentralized private information used to improvise new weapons and capabilities like those which emerged in Afghanistan and Iraq show that it can take many years, decades, or even an indeterminate amount of time for fighting to reveal relevant information about violent capabilities.
Highlights
“What the layman gets to know of the course of military events is usually non-descript
Improvised weapons and decentralized information in Afghanistan and Iraq Using unitary actors in the bargaining failure model has certain advantages in terms of simplicity, but a proper analysis of the private information problem requires that we introduce more complexity
In 2008 improvised explosive device (IED) began accounting for over 50 percent of American forces killed in Afghanistan in a year, and nearly 66 percent of all American forces killed in Afghanistan in 2011
Summary
Weapons improvisation helps weaker belligerents frustrate better armed and funded militaries by creating uncertainty around important military capabilities. Counterinsurgency best practices usually involve foot patrols that put counterinsurgents in closer contact with the local populations they wish to influence. Improvised weapons like IEDs tend to push counterinsurgents into the greater protection of vehicle-mounted patrols, which prevents them from interacting with the local population that is supposed to be their prize. Given these difficulties, a second look is necessary whenever planning a war against what appears to be a weak opponent. If a nation is dead set on fighting a weaker opponent, this analysis of weapons improvisation suggests a quick and limited war with goals and time lines drastically cut back—where feasible in political, budgetary, military, moral, and other ways. Notes I thank Chris Coyne, Bryan Cutsinger, Ennio Piano, Jennifer Matika, and an anonymous reviewer for their help in preparing this paper
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